A soothing reply to all those As Others See Us stories
was heard in Tom Purdom's guest speech at Philcon 2004: 'It used
to bother me that people thought liking science fiction was weird.
But then I discovered that to Americans any interest, be it
astronomy or playing chess or whatever, is weird. The only thing
you can do that Americans won't find weird is watching four hours
of television a night.' ('Which [for Americans, at least] explains
everything,' adds our ace reporter Michael Swanwick.)

Media Spot. From the
Guardian
round-up of newspaper predictions for 2005: '"You would
think that the latest Star Wars instalment [out in May] would be a
dead cert but I feel that the public has tired of this moribund
franchise," says Wendy Ide in the Times. "For space
action, look instead to the Spielberg/Cruise collaboration War of
the Worlds [July]."' Space action? This implies some rather
drastic changes to H.G. Wells's storyline....

Quentin Blake, noted UK illustrator of (especially)
children's books, was made a CBE or Commander of the British
Empire in the New Year honours list -- upgrading his 1988 OBE
award. He's best known for his collaboration with Roald Dahl, but
several of us have a particular nostalgic fondness for his work on
the Uncle fantasies by J.P. Martin. (BBC
story)

R.I.P.Kenneth Vye Bailey (1914-2005), UK sf
poet and critic, has reportedly died. As K.V. Bailey he wrote many
gently erudite reviews for Foundation, The Third
Alternative, Vector, and other magazines; his most
recent book was The Vortices of Time: Poems of Speculation and
Fantasy (1998). Humphrey Carpenter (1946-2005), UK biographer whose works
included J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977), The
Inklings (1978) and The Oxford Companion to Children's
Literature (1984, with Mari Prichard), died on 4 January aged
58. Will Eisner
(1917-2005), legendary cartoonist who created, scripted and drew
The Spirit -- and much else -- died on 3 January following a
quadruple heart bypass. He was 87. Since 1987 his name has been
honoured in the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, which he loved
to present in person. His comics debut was in 1936, and even now a
new graphic novel awaits publication. (SFWA
obituary) Frank
Kelly Freas (1922-2005), one of the best loved of all sf
artists, died on 2 January aged 82. His long career began in 1950
and earned him ten Hugo awards as best artist, beginning in 1955
and with an unbroken run from 1972 to 1976; in 2001 he also
received a Retro Hugo for 1950 work. Besides his hundreds of
colourful, distinctively styled sf magazine and book covers, Freas
spent seven years as chief cover artist for Mad and
designed the Skylab 1 shoulder patch for NASA. He will be much
missed. (CNN
and SFWA obits)

Thog's Masterclass.Dept of the Noisy Dead. 'It
caught a man between neck and shoulder, and the dead man went down
shrieking, but Bahzell had no time to see more than that.' (David
Weber, Oath of Swords, 1995)